Pathogen

overview

Pathogen is a puzzle game pitting the player against a human or AI-controlled opponent for board domination. It includes both single and multiplayer modes, as well as a level editor and is available on mobile & tablet devices.

responsibilities

General usability testing

Collaborated with design team to establish game feel

Contributed to design data about game balance

Bug testing & issue tracking using Redmine

Tested puzzles for appropriate difficulty curve

Tested both single and multiplayer gameplay and balance

Helped to gather data for use in the end-of-game statistics screen

details

On Pathogen my core focus was in multiplayer testing. While I did playtest the main levels for good progression and puzzle solution, the bulk of my work on this project was in multiplayer testing. This meant testing often with larger groups of people and using vastly different tactics and strategies in gameplay. Much of my process involved playing a completely different way from the last one, often very out of the box, with turn-by-turn note taking to document optimal strategies and try to mitigate overpowered plays.

While testing was often in larger groups I had the pleasure of being able to communicate and work directly with the small design team to outline some popular strategies and talk about ways in which I thought the game was being exploited by stronger strategies. Some of this work meant suggesting rough level designs to the design team for them to tweak and implement, ultimately making some of my role as level prototyper. These submissions were added directly to the team's repository and charted in a shared space with other testers & designers to contribute.